If you make yourself more than just a
man, if you devote yourself to an ideal, and if they can’t stop you, and then
you become something else entirely”
“Which is?”
“A Legend, Mr. Wayne”
This caped crusader has certainly become one.
Surely, never has a superhero movie franchise received this much anticipation,
this much appreciation, this much adrenaline which, of course it thoroughly
deserves.
As every kid who grew up in
the 90’s would know, it was Cartoon Network, not the movies which introduced us
to this dark world, portraying this very man whom we all look up to, now. And
yes, it definitely did a lot of justice to the original. It faithfully adhered
to the comics, and did a brilliant sketch of the superhero himself with Kevin
Conroy voicing the Batman. I still adhere to the opinion that Kevin Conroy
could be the best possible voice to the Batman. For people who tend to
disagree, watch the scene when Conroy (Batman) says in the episode “Nothing to
fear” amidst Danny Elfman’s theme,
“I
am the vengeance, I am the night, I am the Batman”
Coming
back to the big screen, we idolized the adroitness of Tim Burton’s classic;
people saw the Batman in Keaton and the Joker in Nicholson. It was one of the
movies that did perfect justice to the literature: The comics. As Bob Kane, the
creator himself puts it aptly,
"I
envisaged Gotham the way I see it now at Pinewood. They've got it, every
building, every trashcan, and every brick.”
Burton
revolutionized the Superhero genre with his two movies. The previous
installments, be it the Adam West’s “Batman” and “The New adventures of
Batman”, made Batman a household name , but can never be juxtaposed to what he
really is now. When people saw a crime fighting hero in Batman, Burton had a
different perspective. He saw a freak in Batman as everyone saw in Joker. The
entire theme of the movie was a duel between two freaks. As he states,
“It’s a fight between two disturbed
people. The Joker is such a great character because there's a complete freedom
to him. Any character who operates on the outside of society and is deemed a
freak and an outcast then has the freedom to do what they want. They are the
darker sides of freedom. Insanity in some scary way is the most freedom you can
have, because you're not bound by the laws of society.”
Burton persisted in his
dark sketch of his freak, with the next installment. And then arose the
ingenuity of Warner Bros, as they felt they wanted the movies to make more
money and portraying the protagonist as a dark freak with flaws won’t help them
in their cause. They made Joel Schumacher the director and Burton take the back
seat as the producer. Seldom did they realize that the next two movies would be
considered as the worst movies ever made in history. To any person who
respected Batman, the script missed the pain that Tim Burton found in a man
tormented by the long-ago murder of his parents. One does have to question the
logic behind adding nipples to the hard-rubber bat suit. Sometimes, I feel that
a director like Perarusu would have done a better job than Joel Schumacher, and
Mallika Sherawath would have done a better “job” than Uma Thurman as Poison Ivy.
When the
news that Nolan and David Goyer were going to reboot the franchise came out in
2003, one had a glister of hope. The director revealed that his intentions was
to make an origins story in a way that has never been told before. It portrayed
Bruce Wayne traumatized by his parents’ death from which he never recovered, by
what people call as “Survivor’s guilt”, and gradually, his anger outweighs his
guilt.
“That
impossible anger strangling the grief until the memory of your loved one just
becomes poison in your veins”.
We did not see Batman as
a superhero, we saw him as a person who was betrayed by the very society that
his parents stood for. We saw him as person who has his fears, who has his
weaknesses, we saw him as us. Batman Begins was more than just a movie. It
impinged everyone what Batman stood for: something more than justice, something
more than revenge. Bats scare him. They remind him why his parents died. This particular scene where Bruce Wayne stands among swirling creatures that blazed in darkness is one of the scenes in the trilogy. To overcome fear, you shouldn't cast yourself away from it. You should embrace it.
"People need dramatic examples to shake them out of apathy. And I cannot
do this as Bruce Wayne. A man is just flesh and blood, and can be
ignored or destroyed. But a symbol, as a symbol I can be
incorruptible, everlasting"
Not just Batman, it was crystal clear
that each character stood for something, something more than what you’d think.
Alfred was not a mere butler; he stood for the name “Wayne” and stood behind
his master as an ally. The covert fatherly affection he shows for Bruce Wayne:
be it consoling the boy who’d lost his parents, or the grief when he tears the
letter by Rachel to Bruce, or the melancholic anger when he hears his master
himself calls Wayne mansion a mausoleum and he’d rather have it down brick by
brick instantaneously makes you shed a tear or two.
“I give a damn because a good man once
made me responsible, for what was most precious to him in the whole world.”
I
am not sure whether anyone in the future can match Christian Bale as Batman in
the future, but am pretty sure that no one can match Michael Caine as Alfred.
Jim
Gordon. “In a town this bent, who is
there to rat to anyway?” He stood for everything that Batman did. He still
had hope in a city which was corrupt, which even Bruce Wayne didn’t as his
desire to revenge overcame the desire for Justice. When everything is bent, every
system was broken, when everything that good stood for deteriorated, it is rare
to see a person imperishable. Every ounce of him was filled with the hope of “We can bring Gotham back”, in all the
three movies, in all the worst circumstances, which makes him such a vital
character.
“I never said Thank you”
“And you’ll never have to”.
Superhero movies are often seen as popcorn
flicks. Viewers enter the theater to be entertained and nothing more. The best
example to the above is “The Avengers”,
which had an ensemble cast, where the plot revolved around an object called
Tesseract and nothing else. It had its moments though, but it makes you
applaud, it doesn’t do anything beyond that. Look at the Spiderman Franchise.
For one thing, Spiderman has a best friend who becomes his enemy, who becomes
his friend, who becomes his enemy, who becomes the suspected girlfriend’s
boyfriend. The entire story revolved around Peter Parker, the douche bag,
getting the girl. The Batman films go deeper, and are more thoughtful than
that. Each of them was entertaining, but the movies spoke about something more
about the human mind. These films were realistic; they didn’t show the
protagonist thrashing the villain every time, instead it was the converse. Let’s
consider Superman. He is powerful, sadly too powerful.
The movies
were not entirely dark, was not entirely serious. It allowed Bruce Wayne to
have his moments. It allowed Alfred and Fox to deliver subtle humor. Amidst the
serious plot, the darkness and sheer villainy, and the complexity of survivor’s
guilt, Nolan has so much to talk about in such an intense screenplay. The scene
when Freeman says,
“Yes, I was fired. And then I got another
job. Yours’ “, or when Bruce says, “Oh, At least we’ll have spares” were
priceless.
I wish to
set aside the argument of which is the best movie among the three, as people
scoff at me when I say Batman Begins is the best among three. Perspectives
differ. This is for people who made fun of the same Superhero (thanks to Joel schumacher), who wear Batman T shirts now . This post
is to ascertain the fact that Christopher Nolan as a true film maker, whose goal
was not to convert the Batman franchise into a money making franchise, but was to
make good movies. People will definitely attempt to reboot the franchise again,
they certainly will, but the bench mark looks impossible to pass. More than the
adrenaline that gushed in my system, seeing the last scene in TDKR, the sense
of an ending will take time to set in.
There is this scene from
Kill Bill 2, so brilliantly narrated by David Carradine to Uma Thurman:
“Now, a staple of the superhero
mythology is, there’s the superhero and there’s the alter ego. Batman is
actually Bruce Wayne, Spider-Man is actually Peter Parker. When that character
wakes up in the morning, he’s Peter Parker. He has to put on a costume to
become Spider-Man. And it is in that characteristic Superman stands alone.
Superman didn’t become Superman. Superman was born Superman. When Superman
wakes up in the morning, he’s Superman. His outfit with the big red “S” –
that’s the blanket he was wrapped in as a baby when the Kents found him. Those
are his clothes.”
I do concur. Spiderman doesn’t wake
up as Spiderman. He wakes up as Peter Parker. Everybody needs a mask to become
somebody else except Superman who is born Superman. But I’ve one single
statement to rebut, that stands for all the Batman Comics, and is the heart of
Nolan’s trilogy, while only rarely touched upon.
“A hero can be anyone. Even a man
doing something as simple and reassuring as putting a coat over a little boy’s
shoulder to let him know that the world hadn’t ended”
Anyone
can be a hero. Anyone who shares his hatred of evil can be Batman.
